Dr Monika Sharma

Dr Monika Sharma

Biology, Gilead Sciences, Foster City, CA, USA

Dr. Monika Sharma is a Research Scientist at Gilead Sciences. Being a part of this organization, she thrives to contribute significantly to bring novel drug targets for fibrotic diseases by supporting and leading research efforts of critical programs in highly matrix environment of Gilead Sciences. Prior to this role, she was a postdoctoral fellow at New York University Langone Medical Center in Prof Kathryn Moore’s lab. She received American Heart Association Fellow during her research time at NYU.

After obtaining her Master’s degree from Panjab University, India, she moved to New Zealand where she received her PhD from the University of Otago under the supervision of Prof Sally McCormick. During her PhD training, she studied the metabolism and intracellular trafficking of lipoprotein(a). Her academic training and research experience have provided her with an excellent background in multiple biological disciplines including immunology, biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and genetics. Along with two peer-reviewed publications, as a major part of her challenging PhD project, she discovered a novel receptor for lipoprotein(a). As the therapeutics to lower Lp(a) levels are still developing, the need for understanding the clearance mechanism holds a great promise for drug targets. Her work on finding the receptor for Lp(a) that leads to the degradation of a part of Lp(a) was published in Circulation Research, which made it to the cover image for that issue and also lead to an editorial in the same issue.

During her graduate studies in New Zealand, she received many scientific and non-scientific honors both in New Zealand as well as internationally. Her research work received a huge acclaim at the scientific community, which bolstered her confidence to move forward and learn new aspects in metabolic diseases and life-threatening diseases such as cancer. In her post-doctoral research training, she has built the multi-disciplinary aspects of chronic inflammatory disorders such as cardiovascular disease and metabolic disease. The major goal of her research is to identify mechanisms to reduce atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Her research has tested that regulatory T cells prevent stop the chronic inflammation and initiate tissue repair to shrink plaques. Dr. Sharma's studies are in progress to identify new therapeutic targets to promote atherosclerosis regression, in line with the American Heart Association's 2020 goal of improving cardiovascular diseases by 20%. Her study was published in Circulation Research in 2020 which was also accompanied by "News & Highlights section" in Nature Reviews Cardiology. Her other work of netrin-1, a molecule has proven to be an inflammatory molecule in various disease states such as atherosclerosis. Her study published in Immunometabolism have suggested that netrin-1 deletion from macrophages, may prevent the weight gain and its consequences of metabolic disorders. She has contributed as co-author is several publications. Monika's full list of Publications can be found here.

Updated 19 September 2023